Welcome to part III of our passive voice lesson. Today, we’ll take a look at constructing the past participle and using –st verbs to convey passive voice. It’ll all lead into a future lesson on lýsingarháttur þátíðar, where we’ll go into even more detail (horray!) on the various uses of past participles. Unfortunately, I underestimated the complexity of passive voice, so I’ll do one last entry to go over –st verbs, using the future tense with this concept, and what to do when you want to use an impersonal verb in passive.

So let’s jump right in.

The past participle is formed from a verb, transforming it (for all intents and purposes) into an adjective. Remember, we’re currently talking about þolmynd, passive voice, although these forms are called past participles, or lýsingarháttur þátiðar.So: það var borðað is our basic paradigm, as in the previous two entries.

STRONG VERBS

Strong verbs become past tense, and are transformed into past participles with a stem change, called a c-víxl (see chart below). I’m happy to go into more detail on stem changes, also called hljóðbreytingar, in future entries.

The past participle of strong verbs conjugates just like an adjective that ends in –inn (hence the above “-ið” endings), like fyndinn (funny).

Lesa: lesinn (M) –> lesin (F) –> lesið (N)

Plural: lesnir (M) –> lesnar (F) –> lesin (N)

Bókin er mikið lesin.

Bækurnar eru mikið lesnar.

WEAK VERBS

The majority of weak verbs form the past participle in the same way that they make the past tense and the imperative.

The magic formulate is stem + suffix + ending

The suffix is, in this case, simple either ð, t, or d.

This class of verbs (weak 1 and 2) are, in brief, verbs that take either –ar in the second person present and –aði in the first person past (type 1 weak), or –ir in the second person present, with a dental suffix (t, d, ð) in the past tense (type 2 weak).

The declension ending will be –ur in the masculine singular nominative, and the participle will decline like a strong adjective, like gulur. The weak become strong!

Class 1

Borða –> borðaður (M) –> borðuð (F) –> borðað (N)

Plural: borðaðir (M.pl) –> borðaðar (F.pl) –> borðuð (N.pl)

Class 2

Gleyma –> gleymdur (M) –> gleymd (F) –> gleymt (N)

Plural: gleymdir (M.pl) –> gleymdar (F. pl) –> gleymd (N.pl)

Class 1

Baka –> bakaður –> bökuð –> bakað
Plural: Bakaðir –> bakaðar –>bökuð

Class 2

Heyra –> heyrður –> heyrð –> heyrt

Plural: heyrðir –> heyðar –> heyrt

Some type 3 verbs also take the appearance of a strong adjective as above. Take flytja (which has a vowel-change called a b-víxl), for example.

As we generally see, the –ja is dropped from the infinitive to make room for the –ur ending. Be aware that, while many –ja verbs decline with the –ur ending and lose their –ja, some do not (take, e.g., the very common “byrja,” for example. It looks like spyrja, but it declines as a Type 1 verb).

Class 3

Flytja –> fluttur –> flutt –> flutt

Plural: fluttir –> fluttar –> flutt

Spyrja –> spurður –> spurð –> spurt

Plural: spurðir –> spurðar –> spurð

Class three verbs like flýja, which has a stem change (b-víxl) are made into a past participle in the same way that strong verbs are.

The rule of thumb is: when the declension ending begins on a vowel (tal – inn, tal – in, tal -ið), the ending is constructed like the past participle of a weak verb (see above). So, with telja, all forms take the strong verb ending except for masculine and feminine plural.

Talinn –> talinn –> talið

Taldir* –> taldar* –> talin.

(Note that the declension ending is “d,” a dental sound, and not “n,” as you might expect for a strong verb)

Velja follows the exact same paradigm, as does ‘ala’.

BUT DON’T PANIC! There are only a handful of these. There are so few, in fact, that I was only able to find these three + the adjective ‘nakinn,’ which declines in this exact same way.

Please – if you have questions, fire away!

I’ll put up some practice exercizes this week for you. It may be best to practice before moving forward.

[As an aside, to wrap up talking about strong/weak: you all seem to be very diligent students, and I feel privileged to have such excellent readership. This all reminds me of a quote from Saint Benedict (I went to a Benedictine college for undergrad): [He] must so arrange everything that the strong have something to yearn for, and the weak have nothing to run from.]

Hi, I'm Meg! I'm a former-New Yorker-now-Reykjavíkur. I'm here to help you learn Icelandic, the language that I love the most.
Me? I'm a former Fulbright scholar, with an MFA from Columbia, and I've published many translations into English from Icelandic and German. I currently study Icelandic, and translate poetry by trade.
(If you have questions or comments on my entries, you can write them to me in the comments in either English, German, or Icelandic.)